Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All

crustandcrumb wrote:seriously, if you can get past the juvenile lyrical content, there are some gems scattered amongst the bullshit. if nothing else, give earl sweatshirt's solo record a listen. i'm beginning to think some of you guys just don't like hip hop to begin with.

i mean, no one ever shat nearly so heavily upon 6 feet deep for its whack lyrical content. does odd future compare to gravediggaz? well, no. but you get what i'm saying.

Man, you are really putting a ton of stock in them if you're espousing the "if you don't like/get Odd Future, you might not like/get hip hop" idea. Really?

No. I am defiantly not making that argument. Just think it's too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater with these guys*. If you're genuinely into hip hop and don't dig 'em, then you just don't dig 'em. There's nothing to "get" (in my opinion).

*I was doing this until just recently. It took downloading their whole discography and listening to a lot of bad rap tunes to figure out there was some decent/great material in there.

Sam wrote:i'm going to bootleg my own set with a Portastudio and upload/convert to .flac, burn and wrap the CD in a giant gatefold usb stick

GrantMcNeilly wrote:I tend to think popular music is becoming more and more of a parody of itself (actually, "hip" culture as a whole is becoming a parody of itself), in every genre.Odd future is, as far as I'm concerned, the total parody of rap - the lyrics, the musics, their delivery. They're complete bullshit.The beastie boys are probably they biggest joke in rap (despite their pretty awesome sampling, occasionally), and Odd Future has some serious similarities to the Beatie Boys' whole shtick, frankly: the stupid lyrics, hipster connections, privileged backgrounds.

So yeah, I don't "get it," but I'm not sure I want to.CRAP

Pretty sure Odd Future don't have privileged backgrounds (and I still think they make bad music).

Earl's dad seemed pretty well renowned to me (shades of Adrock...). Perhaps he's not "privileged" but the family seems pretty worldly. Didn't the New yorker article talk about how they all went to some upscale high school or something? That was the impression got...

TheMilford wrote: We're talking about TV here, not a Slint record or Albert Camus....

crustandcrumb wrote:seriously, if you can get past the juvenile lyrical content, there are some gems scattered amongst the bullshit. if nothing else, give earl sweatshirt's solo record a listen. i'm beginning to think some of you guys just don't like hip hop to begin with.

i mean, no one ever shat nearly so heavily upon 6 feet deep for its whack lyrical content. does odd future compare to gravediggaz? well, no. but you get what i'm saying.

Man, you are really putting a ton of stock in them if you're espousing the "if you don't like/get Odd Future, you might not like/get hip hop" idea. Really?

No. I am defiantly not making that argument. Just think it's too easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater with these guys*. If you're genuinely into hip hop and don't dig 'em, then you just don't dig 'em. There's nothing to "get" (in my opinion).

*I was doing this until just recently. It took downloading their whole discography and listening to a lot of bad rap tunes to figure out there was some decent/great material in there.

Fair enough.

How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette? - George Carlin

GrantMcNeilly wrote:I tend to think popular music is becoming more and more of a parody of itself (actually, "hip" culture as a whole is becoming a parody of itself), in every genre.Odd future is, as far as I'm concerned, the total parody of rap - the lyrics, the musics, their delivery. They're complete bullshit.The beastie boys are probably they biggest joke in rap (despite their pretty awesome sampling, occasionally), and Odd Future has some serious similarities to the Beatie Boys' whole shtick, frankly: the stupid lyrics, hipster connections, privileged backgrounds.

So yeah, I don't "get it," but I'm not sure I want to.CRAP

Pretty sure Odd Future don't have privileged backgrounds (and I still think they make bad music).

Earl's dad seemed pretty well renowned to me (shades of Adrock...). Perhaps he's not "privileged" but the family seems pretty worldly. Didn't the New yorker article talk about how they all went to some upscale high school or something? That was the impression got...

Maybe my facts are wrong. I didn't read the New Yorker article.

How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelette? - George Carlin

gaetano wrote:I really don't get these people. The phrasing is just weak, the "flow" (whatever) is amateurish at best. They say some offensive stuff, so what? 99% of other hip-hop acts do the very same thing.

Don't believe the hype!

hahaha give me a fucking break

one of the things i love about this this forum is that threads are never archived and you can go back and see how people reacted to music before it was a matter of "hype"

i'm reminded of that dirty projectors thread (another wildly creative musical project that hit it big after already releasing voluminous output) that kerble posted two or three years before bitte orca, and some guy had the gall to declare that everyone would forget about them in half a year

like honestly? if you don't like it fine, but odd future have been doing their thing way before you gave a fuck and they'll continue doing it long after. hype isn't self-generating; it occurs when lots of people like something. yonkers blew up like crazy from word of mouth, and now tyler is supposed to be accountable for other peoples' buzz around him? fuck that

although i will say that goblin was an insanely disappointing release. the only track i LOVED off of it was Burger, which wasn't even on the 'album' per se. dude fell into the juvenile trap of rapping about his own newfound notoriety instead of all the off-the-dome funny shit that was organic to him back when he was hungry

also all that rape shit is annoying IMHO, earl's stuff from kitchen cutlery (the album he was gonna do before he started hanging out with tyler) is nearly as stylistically refined and shows that he could just be doing his own thing if he wanted to

one last thing -- am i the only one totally put off by how people point to OF's inarguably cool aesthetic (album artwork, catchphrases, sharp/unique manner of dress, young black dudes skateboarding) etc as somehow invalidating the music? i PREFER for bands i like to have a cool aesthetic! if the music stinks, it doesn't matter how cool your CD looks. but if it doesn't, why is it supposed to count against you that all the non-musical stuff you do is pleasant to look at? such a cheap shot.

Antero wrote:Syd's family is upper-middle class. Tyler's family is poor.

Earl's mother presumably has enough money to ship him off to reform school in Samoa. That New Yorker article is crazy, though - kid is all wrapped up in portents and symbols.

Earl's dad is South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile The proto rap group Last Poets took their name from one of his poems. He was also married to the deputy president of South Africa. It is unclear if they have or have ever had a relationship. He's stated in interviews that he has never heard Earls music.

I think I might have mentioned this earlier in the thread but in a very male dominated industry I like the fact that their music is engineered and mixed by a 19 year old girl in a room at her parents house. Go Syd!

gaetano wrote:I really don't get these people. The phrasing is just weak, the "flow" (whatever) is amateurish at best. They say some offensive stuff, so what? 99% of other hip-hop acts do the very same thing.

Don't believe the hype!

if you don't like it fine, but odd future have been doing their thing way before you gave a fuck and they'll continue doing it long after.

"Don't believe the hype" is the title of a song by a hip-hop band called Public Enemy.

gaetano wrote:I really don't get these people. The phrasing is just weak, the "flow" (whatever) is amateurish at best. They say some offensive stuff, so what? 99% of other hip-hop acts do the very same thing.

Don't believe the hype!

if you don't like it fine, but odd future have been doing their thing way before you gave a fuck and they'll continue doing it long after.

"Don't believe the hype" is the title of a song by a hip-hop band called Public Enemy.

Nah, forget it, nevermind.

I think I've heard of that song! Actually, I think I've heard it hundreds of times, but thanks for clarifying.

I bring up a female music-industry pal who bristles at the rape references in the group’s lyrics, and Hodgy fires back: “That’s because she probably had that ass tapped before, that’s why. Bitch, fuck her. Nigga, we rap about what we wanna rap about. If she don’t like it, fuck her.”

I bring up a female music-industry pal who bristles at the rape references in the group’s lyrics, and Hodgy fires back: “That’s because she probably had that ass tapped before, that’s why. Bitch, fuck her. Nigga, we rap about what we wanna rap about. If she don’t like it, fuck her.”

I bring up a female music-industry pal who bristles at the rape references in the group’s lyrics, and Hodgy fires back: “That’s because she probably had that ass tapped before, that’s why. Bitch, fuck her. Nigga, we rap about what we wanna rap about. If she don’t like it, fuck her.”

I bring up a female music-industry pal who bristles at the rape references in the group’s lyrics, and Hodgy fires back: “That’s because she probably had that ass tapped before, that’s why. Bitch, fuck her. Nigga, we rap about what we wanna rap about. If she don’t like it, fuck her.”

I bring up a female music-industry pal who bristles at the rape references in the group’s lyrics, and Hodgy fires back: “That’s because she probably had that ass tapped before, that’s why. Bitch, fuck her. Nigga, we rap about what we wanna rap about. If she don’t like it, fuck her.”

steve wrote:I spent about 40 minutes with these little pricks at the end of May and I haven't wanted to strangle anybody that much in a real long time.

I am totally curious how you ended up spending even five seconds with any member of Odd Future, let alone forty minutes... Do tell.

My band shared an airport shuttle with them in Barcelona. They piled onto the shuttle late, after finally getting corralled by their minder, who was nursing a head wound with an ice bag wrapped in a towel. They piled in, niggering everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a faggot. Then one of them lit a joint (or a pipe, I didn't look) and told the driver to shut the fuck up nigger and smoked it anyway. A female passenger tried to engage one of them in conversation, but he just stared at her with a dead-to-me stare while his seatmate flipped double birds in her face.

The whole trip they complained about not being at a McDonalds and repeatedly shouted for the motherfucker to pull over so they could get some fucking McDonalds nigger. Interspersed with the McDonalds requests were shouted boasts about how often they masturbated and fucked bitches nigger and got paid like a motherfucker fifty grand like a motherfucker. They continued complaining that the trip was taking too long and insisted they be fed immediately all the way to the airport, where their minder presumably fed them.

I am quite happy none of them engaged me directly, because at least one of us would have regretted it.

I am well aware, thanks, that good people can make ugly art and that ugly people can make good art. Ultimately the function of art is to express something and move an idea from one person to another, and the tools of that can include revulsion and discomfort. Having been in a few bands myself, thanks, I know that the uninitiated can mistake these devices as windows into the soul of the creator. Ultimately they are, of course, but not necessarily in the crude autobiographical way they are often interpreted.

I know all that, so I am never quick to judge a person based on a superficial reading of creative output. Peter Sotos is a lovely fellow whom I trust implicitly, despite his writing evoking a truly primal disgust in me, to use another rapey example. Michael Gerald from Killdozer said it best in an interview, when the journalist remarked that he seemed like a nice fellow, which was unexpected given that the characters in his songs are often repellent. "Oh, that's not us," he said, "that's the crazy people we sing about." In that light, I am one hundred percent behind Odd Future's right to rap about what they wanna rap about, and if she don't like it fuck her.

And also fuck me. It's none of my business what they wanna. I'm not part of the audience for hip hop, and as a non-dilettante I don't generally respond to it when I hear it, so I can't make any critical assessment of Odd Future's music on its own terms, but they go out of their way to make it clear that this is not a case of regular people making music about assholes, but assholes making music about being assholes. I have no time for that. I don't respond kindly to it when Ted Nugent does it either.

If the whole thing is a put-on, a bit of Vincent Gallo life-as-theater for the benefit of whoever happens to be sitting next to them, that's no excuse. It's being an asshole about being an asshole.